Time Gone By ✡ NCIS TIVA Fanfiction

Chapter 7

(04:23 AM in the morning)

DiNozzo woke up because it was unnaturally hot in here.

When he opened his eyes, all he could se was smoke.

Before he could react, a hand grabbed his collar and dragged him out of his apartment.

"DiNozzo, are you okay?" Tony needed a second to realize what was going on.

"Your apartment is on fire, Tony!" He looked straight into the ice blue eyes of his boss.

"Lucky you that I got you out of there, the firefighters are already on their way, but anything else in there will be burnt down before they arrive."

Tony gasped for breath. Then he ran back into the apartment without thinking what he was doing. "Hey!" Gibbs shouted.

DiNozzo fought his way through the flames to his bedroom. The smoke made tears come into his eyes and he couldn't see clearly any more.

"Ziva!" he yelled, his voice cracking.

She lay lifeless on the edge of his bed, the eyes closed.

He carried her over his shoulder, when a sudden wall of flames came into his way. Tony screamed.

He could her Gibbs from the other end of the room. "What the hell are you doing?" Tony couldn't breathe. He couldn't answer. His jacket had caught fire, but all that mattered was to get Ziva out.

Tony ran through fire without thinking about himself. He reached the living room and then - finally - Gibbs pushed them out. He drowned the flames on DiNozzo's jacket, and then he saw the woman lying on the floor, smoky and apparently dead.

"Boss, is she breathing?" Tony asked, barely loud enough for Gibbs to understand.

His eyes were filled with tears, not to say if it was because of the fire or because of Ziva. "I can't lose her again" he whispered, his voice filled with pain.

Gibbs felt her pulse and nodded at Tony.

She was alive.

"Damn it, don't you have a fire extinguisher?" His boss asked. DiNozzo could barely speak with his lungs dry and full of smoke. "Let's get you into a hospital" he said as Tony didn't answer.

Tony was glad, that Gibbs didn't ask what Ziva was doing in his apartment or in his bed.

The firefighters arrived and moved them back into the hospital. He passed out.

When he woke up, he didn't open his eyes, knowing Gibbs was in the room. He wasn't in the mood to answer questions, not in the mood to explain.

First, he had to order everything in his head.

Where had the fire come from? He hadn't left his stove on or anything like that, he'd been careful with everything, even more since Ziva was there.

Somebody must have started the fire on purpose; he saw no other possibility that could have happened. He felt guilty anyway, he should have noticed it, and he should have saved her earlier.

The nurses were talking fast and silently in the back, but he overheard a few words. "...young woman... coma... barely breathing... get her through... we'll see..."

He took a deep breath.

Was she going to make it? What if not? He wouldn't be able to live with that. Having left her in Israel, which had already been pretty hard for him, but watching her die in the hospital because of something that happened in his apartment? In the last time, he had gone through so much and he wasn't sure if he could take any more of things like that.

Suddenly, he understood how Ziva felt before she had left. He wasn't even thinking about giving up his job and everything else like she did, but he just needed a break from all this.

But first, he wanted to get whoever was responsible for Ziva being coma and he wanted him to pay for it.

"It's not your fault, you know." Tony sat up, turning around to Gibbs who sat in the other corner of the room.

"I know" He replied drily, not believing what he said. He should have been more careful and none of this would have happened.

"I didn't act negligently; I never left the oven on fire or anything like that. Someone else did this and either Ziva or me or both of us were supposed to die in that fire!" His voice cracked, remembering that it was a while ago that he had talked as "us" about him and Ziva.

When did things become so difficult? "Yeah, but you made it, DiNozzo, you saved her. Everything is alright." Gibbs calmed him down.

Tony ran his hand through his hair. "I saved her." He repeated.